abandonware games sorted by popularity

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that s...

Caution: subtlety not included. Blue Angel 69, released in 1989 for DOS, is basically what happens when a programmer tries to mix erotic art with a tile-based puzzle game and ends ...

In the Dead of Night is one of those mid-90s DOS oddities that feels like it crawled straight out of a programmer’s personal nightmares. Part adventure, part horror, and part...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find y...

Strike Commander is a high-speed flight simulator that combines fighter combat with a surprisingly ambitious campaign structure. You fly missions, manage your aircraft and take par...

In Air Force Commander (1992), you don’t just fly planes - you run the whole air force. Think of it as being a general with a spreadsheet addiction. Assign squadrons, manage ...

Tomahawk is an early helicopter flight simulation that puts the player behind the controls of a military aircraft and expects them to take the job rather seriously. Navigation, wea...

Sub Command is a detailed naval simulation that puts you in command of modern submarines and expects considerably more than random button pressing. The game focuses on tactical sub...

Viz is a cheeky little game based on the famously irreverent British comic magazine, and it has absolutely no intention of behaving like a respectable educational title. Released i...

IndyCar Racing is a racing simulation video game developed by Papyrus Design Group and published by Virgin Interactive. Released in 1993 for MS-DOS, it marked a significant step fo...

Evets is a puzzle game that proves simplicity can be deceptive. With minimal graphics and a straightforward premise, it invites you in gently before revealing its true complexity. ...

A moody sci-fi adventure drenched in neon gloom, The Orion Conspiracy (1995, DOS) tosses you into a futuristic murder mystery where everyone seems to be hiding something—ofte...

By 1989, Dragon’s Lair had already become legendary in arcades, so its DOS port had a lot to live up to. Spoiler: it couldn’t quite match the arcade’s gorgeous la...

Incursion is a modern love letter to classic tactical RPGs, clearly inspired by tabletop rulesets and games like early Fallout. It throws you into a turn-based world where position...

Tunnels of Armageddon is a strategy and action game set in a bleak post-apocalyptic environment where survival depends on navigating dangerous underground passages and dealing with...

Doubling down on chaos, Fire and Forget 2 turns the volume up and asks questions later. The concept remains deliciously simple: speed forward, blast everything, try not to explode ...

Prophecy of the Shadow is a 1992 role-playing game that takes players on a traditional fantasy adventure filled with exploration, combat, and magical mysteries. Players create a ch...

Timequest is a time-travel adventure in which history itself becomes your playground, provided you are willing to accept the considerable responsibility of not accidentally destroy...

Sid & Al's Incredible Toons is a wonderfully strange 1993 puzzle game where the laws of physics seem to have taken an extended vacation. Players create elaborate contraptions using...

Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio is a 1988 DOS adaptation of the classic economic and political strategy game in which players attempt to rule a small Italian principality. The objective...

Super Huey UH-IX is an early helicopter simulation that places you in the cockpit and asks you to master the wonderfully awkward business of keeping a rotorcraft airborne. The game...

Troika is a strategy game with a distinctly old-school approach, asking players to think carefully about resources, movement, and long-term decisions rather than simply charging ah...

Beneath Apple Manor is a pioneering game in the roguelike genre, originally developed and released in 1978 by Don Worth for the Apple II and later re-released for DOS as a "Special...

The Last Express is an unusually ambitious adventure set aboard the Orient Express in 1914, just before Europe tumbles into the First World War. You play an American passenger caug...

Released in 1994 for DOS, Iron Cross is a historical strategy game that tries very hard to make military planning look sexy. Spoiler: it doesn’t. You’re dealing with Wo...

Highway Fighter delivers straightforward action with a focus on reflexes and timing. It throws obstacles your way with enthusiasm, expecting you to adapt quickly or face the conseq...

Escape from Delirium feels like someone took a pulp adventure novel, dipped it in a bucket of chaos, and fed it to a DOS system. You wake up with amnesia (because of course you do)...

The original Crusader: No Remorse sets the tone for the series: brutal, explosive, and unapologetically action-focused. You’re a rogue operative taking on a dystopian corpora...

Williams Arcade Classics is essentially a small time machine disguised as a computer game, collecting several classic arcade experiences in one package. Instead of asking players t...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch leans into the chaos of its source material and then adds a layer of video game unpredictability on top. In Gremlins 2, you deal with enemies that are as ...